101-Year-Old Cheerleader Still Cheers From The Sidelines

One Tennessee State University cheerleader is a bit more experienced than the rest. After all, former student Burnece Walker Brunson was first a student and cheerleader back in 1934, before many of us were even born.

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That was a time when the football teams played in leather helmets and the basketball teams played games at Washington Junior High and even to when the legendary school and band, had a different name — Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College.

Even though she’s a little wiser and older than she was when she was a student, some things about Brunson never change. Like her cheerleading style. She doesn’t do back flips, cart wheels or is apart of a cheerleader pyramid. She never did those things. Cheerleaders didn’t do what Brunson calls that “fancy stuff” back then.

This won’t be the first Brunson has gone back to cheer on her team. The retired schoolteacher got back into uniform for the 2003 TSU homecoming, as well as in 2012. But 2015 was special since she is celebrating her centennial birthday. And she was back again doing it 2016.

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In her full cheerleading outfit, she joined many of the school’s other cheerleading alumni and shook her pompoms at a pep rally at Hale Stadium in advance of the football game against Eastern Illinois at Nissan Stadium.

Brunson also was part of the homecoming parade on Jefferson Street, which led to the school where she was a…